#by yasunori mitsuda with vocals and lyrics by laura shigihara

[marshmallowgoop]

We're both so alone A warmth that we'd never known

[Song link] [YouTube link]

[kobraspartan117]

A vocal cover (Adriana Figueroa) of Yasunori Mitsuda - Corridors of Time from the game “Chrono Trigger”. Featuring lyrics by Laura Shigihara & music by Ryan Lafford.

[marshmallowgoop]

Every time I "finish" an AMV, I create a comparison like this.

The left side is the "effectless" draft—minimal transitions, zero coloring, limited text animation—while the right side is the "final" version I post online. It's a way to assess my work; where did the added effort elevate the edit, and where do my eyes find themselves drawn more to the draft because the "final" version is too busy, too overwhelming, too much?

I'm new to video editing. There aren't even 20 AMVs to my name, and I only seriously started a little over a year ago. My process involves a lot of struggling with what a "good" AMV is, a lot of wondering if I'm doing it all wrong—anxieties that were only exacerbated by a popular post that crossed my dash many months ago. It decried AMVs that don't edit with the full song as worthless, bad, garbage. The kids don't know how to do it right.

Not a kid, but maybe they've got a point!

Still, it was a disheartening sentiment to read. And while I might not know much, I think I am confident in knowing this: there are many AMV styles out there, and the shorter ones may certainly not be everyone's cup of tea, but that doesn't mean that they're devoid of love, time, effort, or passion. The video at the top of this post is hardly 30 seconds long, and it still took over 60 hours of spilling out ideas and cutting clips and learning new skills and scrapping new skills and tweaking transitions and coloring and recoloring and shaking my head and giving up and trying again.

Fan vidders, no matter the style they employ, are devoting their free time and energy to create. It'd be ludicrous to suggest that a movie is inherently inferior to a TV series, or a short story automatically meaningless compared to a novel.

The same should absolutely apply to fan videos.